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Last weekend I worked a bones stall at the Green Man Festival in Wales. There were two pie stands! I ate at Pieminster, but unfortunately didn’t get to try the other one, Barnaby Sykes. However, their stand was amazingly designed.

In this week’s Game of Pies (4:8), Hot Pie returns with a rather random interlude about his pie technique.

“A good kidney pie is all about the ingredients – flour, lard, water, eggs, milk. Easy enough. But the meat – peacetime or not, getting your hands on a good bottom round steak and calves’ kidneys is not easy. I mean, some people settle for plain old beef kidneys… and the gravy. Don’t get me started on the gravy! Very difficult to get right. See, a lot of people give up on the gravy. You CAN NOT give up on the gravy! No gravy, no pie. Simple as that.

Ah! A show set in fictional Medieval-to-Renaissance Europe, and finally we have a pie worthy of Titus Andronicus! This week’s episode (S4ep2, “The Lion and the Rose”) features Joffrey’s wedding feast, the centerpiece of which is a gigantic pie with pastry decorations and a pastry crown.

Credit: winteriscoming.net

Inside the pie are LIVE DOVES. Additionally, inside this giant pastry shell is another normal size pie, which you can see shortly after the scene pictured.

I guess pie night has a new aspirational pie.

(Additionally, if you google image “game of thrones pie”, you get pictures of the character known as Hot Pie. This will change, friends, once the Pie of Thrones makes its way across the pieosphere.)

Ok, it was yesterday, and I’ve been too busy for baking as my upgrade (big PhD paper thing) is coming up. BUT Serious Eats never fails to deliver; this year they have their easy pie dough recipe. Hopefully I’ll get to test it out soon!

This afternoon I made another pie on tour! Well, not so much a tour. Just one. But it was delicious. A good pie for a sunny winter afternoon.

I went to the home of Ginny, founder of the new blog Mango Kitchen, which features inventive and modern kosher recipes. I went in with two options: either make another Lee’s Pie (the perennial favorite) or do a kitchen sweep pie. What’s a kitchen sweep pie? It’s where I sweep the kitchen for all available ingredients and build a pie out of it. I was directed towards the sweet potatoes, the red pepper, and the immense selection of spices from the Dekalb Farmers Market. I had an idea. Everything changed a little as I was introduced to more ingredients, but here’s the final list:

The spice
The two key spices here are oregano and Jamaican pepper (aka allspice). Use these liberally.
A splash of cayenne and paprika.
A quarter can of coconut milk
Of course, s+p.

Ginny set a beautiful table

The method
Sautee the onion. When it’s well on its way, add in the smashed garlic. When both are done, mix in the pumpkin and season. Are there good smells? Add the sweet potato and red pepper and continue to season. At this point it should be very spicy! Do you know how to reduce that? Yup, it’s just a wee bit of coconut milk.

It’s fall, and that means pumpkin season! Trader Joe’s falls in love with pumpkins, and Serious Eater Erin tried to eat all of them. The excellent blog The Awl chronicled all the pumpkin items featured in the advertisement.

The SE article was accompanied by this adorable chart (by Roboppy!):

Courtesy Serious Eats/Robyn Lee.

Another article by Kathy YL Chan reviews a delicious-looking pumpkin custard at Cha-an in New York, which sadly I will never get to eat as I have no plans to be in NY this fall.

And, lest you think I devote my life to just reposting SE:

I am now ordering weekly veg boxes from Riverford Organic; last week I ordered a squash box as well, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. Apparently if kept well, they last all winter.

I also had a birthday pie night this week, with a Lee’s Pie and a Lentil Shepherd’s Pie. I tried to make a gluten-free crust for the Lee’s Pie, but I don’t think I added enough water; it turned into a crumble. No worries! Still tasty!

So, I have gone kind of vegan-in-the-home to see if it would help my cholesterol and allergies. My mom is overjoyed, and we’ve been making quinoa and lentils out the wazoo. Last week for her birthday I made a vegan shepherds pie that was actually delicious – it tasted exactly like it would with meat!!! And much healthier, too.

I adapted the recipe from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Appetite for Reduction, but since I can never follow a recipe exactly, I’ll put it in as I made it and note the differences from the book.

First, mashed potatoes. My dad made these with his own mental recipe. Basically: peels and roughly chop 1 sweet and 4 white potatoes; parboil until squishy. Drain, let cool, mash. Then he added a bunch of herbs per my request and salt and pepper. Usually he adds Benecol, but the sweet potato was creamy enough to not need it.

Sauté the onions and then the zucchini (and shrooms, if you have).** Add spices and herbs and cook for another 5 minutes. Add carrots, lentils, and broth; cover and bring to a boil. Simmer for 25 minutes, or until the lentils are squishy and have absorbed all the broth. If it’s boiled away and the lentils are still hard, add more broth (and lower the heat). Add Worcestershire and peas; let sit 10 minutes.

The recipe then calls for the serving of the lentils over the mashed potatoes (or, rather, caulipots – cauliflower mashed potatoes), but since it was a special birthday meal we decided to make it look more like a real shepherds pie and bake it for a bit. We half-filled a Corningware with the lentils and then covered them with a thick layer of mash. This was excellent, as it really crisped up the top and the sweet potato gave it all that orange color that usually comes from the fat (absent in this dish). It was missing just a little something, so we individually added ketchup. Wha-bam! Excellent. Next time I may add Pomi into the lentil mixture instead.

*I got to use my new OXO garlic press! So much easier than my old method (slicing and chopping).

**The recipe says to saute the onions for 4 minutes. However, onions taste best caramelized, which takes much longer. Please, by all means cook your onions half an hour or more, carefully watched. Longer on lower heat makes for more delicious.

Kathleen K recently posted this hint, which is to use cold vodka instead of water in the pie crust to make it flakier. Perhaps you could use it in this Serious Eats rhubarb pie? According to Kathleen, Alton Brown recommends using apple brandy for an apple pie crust, but I doubt there’s a suitable rhubarb liqueur replacement… suggestions welcome!

So, I am back from Sudan and working for a caterer in Atlanta. We’ll see if they require my pie skills in the future… they already made tons of delicious empanadas last week! In the meantime, here’s a quick update of the pies made for Pi Day posted on Neatorama.

It’s an apple pie, in case you were interested, but I think a more apt filling would be salted beef and potatoes in ale…

I wish I had actually remembered it was pi day before the evening, when I was reminded by Young Katie. Otherwise I could have posted this link from Illinois Science featuring Chicago restaurants with pie specials.

With the family on diet, it’s unlikely I’ll be baking pies in the near future. However, I saw an ad for KFC’s new chicken pot pies, and boy, if that isn’t a heart attack in a tin… must try nomnomnom. I rarely eat fast food, but if I can sneak away from dietland I will post a report.